Exam 12: Social Class and Lifestyles

Lower-class men are more likely than middle-class men to have a general sense of empowerment.

The flamboyant consumption of the nouveau riche is an example of symbolic self-completion.

The term plutonomy was coined to describe an economy that relies on a large and healthy middle class.

When people are differentiated in terms of their aesthetic and intellectual preferences, a ________ concept is being applied.

According to a classic view of the American class structure, the newer social elites, drawn from current professionals, belong to which of the following social class categories?

Consumers who are ________ love buying everything in sight.

Social class is a strong predictor of purchases that have symbolic aspects, but low to moderate prices. Which of the following is the best example of a product with those characteristics?

Identify the three components marketers use to express a consumption style and explain why marketers would want to express a consumption style.

A person who is born into a rich, powerful family (i.e., "She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth") is said to have ________ status.

A Rolls-Royce, a Cartier diamond, and an Andy Warhol painting are all items bought and displayed as markers of social class. These products are ________.

Lifestyle is a statement about who one is in society and who one is not.

Of the three groups of attitudes toward luxury, the largest group is "luxury is indulgence"; this view is held mainly by seniors with wealth.

With respect to social organization, some barnyard animals exhibit signs of a dominance-submission hierarchy. Which of the following terms best communicates such a hierarchy?

Conspicuous waste is the opposite of conspicuous consumption because one is aimed at showing how important a person's wealth is, and the other is aimed at showing how unimportant his or her wealth is.

Pierre Bourdieu concluded that "taste" is a ________ that causes consumption preferences to cluster together.

We tend to marry people in a similar social class to our own. Sociologists call this ________, or assortative mating.

Social capital refers to an individual's knowledge of the "right" behavior used in the realm of the upper class.

The American rich often indulge in luxury goods while pinching pennies on everyday items.

The entire upper class (upper-upper and lower-upper combined) comprises less than 2 percent of all Americans.

The phenomenon called ________ refers to the creation of artificial divisions in a society.